More Information

• A 2004-05 survey showed that 34 percent of Bexar County adults are overweight and an additional 35 percent are obese. The obesity rate in 2002 was 24 percent.

• Just 29 percent of Bexar County adults say that they were of a healthy body weight, compared to 32 of adults statewide.

• Despite overweight/obesity statistics, only 22 percent of county adults reported being advised to lose weight by their doctor or health professional.

• Ten percent of county adults have Type 2 diabetes. The rate is highest among African Americans (14 percent), followed by Hispanic/Latino (13 percent) and Caucasians (6 percent.)

• The leading causes of death for Bexar County adults are heart disease, motor vehicle accidents, diabetes and throat and lung cancer.

• The obesity rate for the state of Texas has nearly doubled in the past 15 years.

• Three of the five leading causes of death in Texas in 2001 were for chronic diseases linked with obesity, including heart disease, stroke and cancer.

• Health problems of obese Texans are estimated to cost $10.5 billion, including health care, loss of productivity and mortality. The cost is expected to grow to between $26.3 billion and $40 billion by the year 2040.

Sources: Bexar County Community Health Collaborative; Bexar County Health Status Report 2008; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Strategic Plan for the Prevention of Obesity in Texas: 2005-2010.

"The Weight of the Nation" by the numbers

15: The percent of vegetables children consume that are potato chips or french fries

25: The percent of American teens who drink an average of four sodas a day

33: The percent of children born after 2000 who are expected to develop diabetes

40-50: The percent of their diet that children eat at school

$45 billion: The amount of federal subsidies given every five years to growers of corn

We've all heard news reports on obesity in the United States, fresh statistics from the latest study, read with professional detachment, while images of pudgy bodies cross the screen, their faces blurred or heads just out of the camera frame. It's been going on for years, as much a staple of TV news as the weather report.

Unlike the weather, though, there is a lot Americans can do about weight problems, and every minute we delay is not only critical but both deadly and costly. Obesity is perhaps America's biggest health problem.

That's the message in HBO's four-part, documentary "The Weight of the Nation." Produced by Sheila Nevins and John Hoffman, "Weight" pulls no punches, spares neither the multibillion-dollar food and advertising industries nor public officials for not only failing to fix the problem but actually making it worse. "Weight of the Nation" essentially writes a prescription for the nation's health and economic future.

"This is preventable," says Jack Shonkoff of Harvard's Center on the Developing Child, one of the many medical experts participating in the film. "This is not one of those unfortunate acts of nature that we just have to accept as reality. This is not the product of a tsunami."

How fat are we? The answer is: Plenty. More than two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese, while one-third of our children and adolescents are overweight and 18 percent are obese. Obesity contributes to five of the 10 leading causes of death in America, costs business more than $73 billion a year and adds $150 billion to health costs.

How did we get this way? Beginning in the late 20th century, we moved to a food industry based on what Dr. Kelly Brownell of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity calls "a cheap-food model." And the cheapest food also is the least healthy. The category not only includes all kinds of packaged, processed foods, but, of course, fast-food offerings, which have become the plaque-building lifeblood of the American diet.

The most tragic victims of the nation's weight epidemic are kids, who are, as Brownell puts it, "besieged" by advertising from an industry that wants them to eat more. He labels food marketing to children as "powerful, pernicious and predatory."

About 40 to 50 percent of food eaten by kids is consumed at school, and school cafeterias, which have to be financially self-sufficient, push unhealthy, pre-packaged food at kids.

And then there are those sodas. The average child drinks four sodas a day, which is the equivalent of an entire extra meal in terms of calories. Sodas, as well as energy drinks and flavored water, have no nutritional value and often are loaded with sugar.

It's not just about how fat your kids are but what their weight issues portend for their futures. A landmark study in Bogalusa, La., launched 40 years ago, followed overweight kids through adulthood to monitor their health. The study was key in proving that cardiovascular disease begins in childhood. Obese kids today already are beset with the health problems facing obese 25-year-olds, including Type 2 diabetes.

The situation only is exacerbated by the increasing lack of activity in American lives, and especially in kids, who become hooked at an early age on TV, computers and social media. Many schools have eliminated gym classes and poor neighborhoods often lack parks where kids can play.

Susan Combs, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, is one public official who understands the severity of the crisis. Texas has the sixth-highest rate of childhood obesity in the country and ranks as the nation's 12th "fattest" state, she says. By 2025, Combs estimates that private employers in Texas will incur an additional $30 billion a year in health-care costs.

Combs engineered a grant program called Texas Fitness Now, and a three-year survey of schools that added its fitness programs show an overall improvement in fitness, as well as "a strong correlation" to better math and reading skills.

"Weight of the Nation" is filled with provocative and sometimes scary information. But the biggest take-away in the series is that the nation's weight crisis can be reversed. So, for that matter, can an individual's weight crisis. The commercial diet industry won't be any happier about the HBO series than the food industry. In the second part of the series, "Choices," Susan Yager, author of "The Hundred Year Diet," says bluntly: "The diet industry has no reason to solve the problem. Solving the problem puts them out of business."

So what's an overweight person to do? The solution comes in changing your lifestyle for the rest of your life. To lose weight, set realistic goals for yourself, get support from others who are trying to lose, plan your meals and exercise portion control, and monitor your caloric intake.

What about all those packages in the supermarket aisles, trumpeting the health benefits of the food they contain? Some of those claims may be true, others only relatively so, but who is really checking? The food industry itself, which is largely self-regulating.

That doesn't mean the healthy-food advocates are ready to throw in the napkin. To some of the participants in the HBO documentary, the battle for a healthier diet and an increase in public awareness of the physical and financial costs of our national weight crisis isn't dissimilar to the decades-long battle against the tobacco industry.